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I N S P I R I N G S T O R I E S O F T H E O L D E R G E N E R A T I O N

DR GOH KAY CHEE

"It is a safety net for people who have nothing else."
by Nurnylia Atikah Mohd Azhan & Chua Run Kang

"Very dark, gloomy, understaffed. The residents looked bored and
depressed- I felt the same way too." This was what he said after
having house call visits at a few nursing homes. He felt
disappointed when he found the living environment was not
up to his expectations and the residents were treated in an
undignified way. He was aware that a nursing home should be
a brighter place, having good ventilation, colourful walls and
even introduced some facilities to make life more cheerful.
Some of the residents were already suffering from illness and
their environment can definitely affect their health, physically
or mentally. Thus, at his middle age, he started his own
nursing home with his wife. "If I was doing this alone, I might
have closed it down after five years. I was very lucky to have my
wife helping me," he said. Dr Goh Kay Chee during his
younger days

It was incredibly challenging to run a nursing home for over
20 years while working as a medical general practitioner.
Thanks to Dr. Goh’s knowledge in the medical field, all his
residents can benefit from a more comprehensive care. He
emphasised that people needed to have ‘special love’ for older
adults if they were to engage in this profession, even as a staff
member. Older adults could be very stubborn, slow and
incoherent and sometimes pressure from the staff’s families to
despise their occupation could affect their psychology, making
them mistreat the resident to release their repressed
emotions.

“ Dr Goh Kay Chee on newspaper

Nursing homes are not what they used to be; things have changed where the environment and
living conditions are far better than the past.
-Dr Goh Kay Chee

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